Garman and Worse eBook

did not presume on his acquaintance, and preserved
his polite and even respectful manner, she became
at last used to his society, and had even a kind of
sympathetic feeling for him. For Tom Robson she
had always an unconquerable aversion. It is true
that she saw Tom only from his worst side, when he
was drinking. In the morning, when Robson was
sober, there was something of the gentleman about him.
He was always neatly dressed in a blue serge suit,
coloured shirt, and in dry weather wore canvas shoes.
It was a great pleasure for the young Consul to go
his morning round in the ship-yard with Mr. Robson.
The work went on bravely, and the ship bid fair to
be both handsome and well built. Mr. Garman knew
Tom’s weakness as well as any one, but as long
as he attended to his work he was free to use his
leisure as he liked. The firm had always worked
on the principle that the less the workpeople were
interfered with the better. They worked all the
better for it, and gave far less trouble generally.

“I think she ought to be ready next spring,”
said the Consul one day in the beginning of July.

“In about eight or nine months, if the winter
is not too wet,” answered Tom.

“I should be very pleased if we could manage
to launch her on the 15th of May,” said the
Consul, in a low tone; “but you must not mention
the day to any one; you understand, Mr. Robson?”

“All right, sir,” answered Tom.

Tom did not betray the day, even to his friend Master
Gabriel; he only said it was to be some time in the
spring, and with that Gabriel had to be content:
but he still showed great curiosity as to what the
name of the ship was to be. Tom swore that he
knew nothing about it, and Morten answered that it
was “a thing which did not concern schoolboys.”
From which Gabriel inferred that neither of them knew
much about it, and, at all events, not Morten.

During the summer Gabriel got on but poorly at school;
it seemed really too hard that he should have to pore
over his books, while the work was going on with all
its noise and bustle in the ship-yard. His character-book
showed a sad spectacle, and each month when he had
to take it in to his father, he made up his mind to
make a little speech, of which the burden was to be,
that he did not wish to continue his studies, but
to be employed in the office, or be allowed to go to
sea, or anywhere his father chose to send him.
But each time when he stood before those cold blue
eyes, every word seemed to vanish from his memory,
and he looked so helpless and confused that his father
shook his head as he left the room, and said—­

“I can’t make the boy out. I don’t
think he will ever grow into a man.”

When first Madeleine came to Sandsgaard, Gabriel had
found it a great relief to confide his woes to her.
But now she had got too clever for him, and refused
to be frightened by his threats of running away to
sea, or giving his master, Mr. Aalbom, some rat-poison
in his toddy, and he ended by feeling jealous of Delphin.